A blog for recording some of my miscellaneous projects on programming, home automation, wearable computing etc.

Sunday, 31 March 2013

Snowboard HUD Part 10 - Summary

This is the last post (for a while) in this series on hacking together a pair of Heads-Up-Display snowboard goggles. At some point in the future I might revisit this and add in some more sensors and update the display -- I still haven't added in the temperature sensor and there are some really easy things to do in Python to add more functionality (e.g. keeping track of maximum speed, stopwatch functionality etc). This picture shows all the components put together.

This video shows the goggles now that I've hot glued the MyVu components in. It's a bit of a mess and probably needs another layer of foam added around the outside to hide all the glue and put a bit more separation between your face and the MyVu.

I've also recorded one more video showing the view through the goggles.

So in summary, it seems it is possible to hack together something that approximates a pair of Heads-Up-Display snowboard goggles. Although I'm not too sure about actually carrying around all that kit for real.Also probably best not to be strapping things to your face that could poke out your eyes during an accident.

So the total for all this would be about £160! Thankfully I had a lot of this already anyway from other projects. I guess it shows that the Recon glasses are actually quite good value for the technology that you are getting and the functionality that it offers.

If I end up getting a pair of the proper Recon goggles I'll have a play with the SDK and see what else interesting could be done with a properly engineered product!

Oh, and #IfIHadGlass, I'd start with reimplementing this, before getting on to a load of other projects I'd like to try :)

Hi, thanks for the comment! I've had a look again for these glasses and they do seem to have gone up a bit since I got mine. I'm not sure but Wikipedia tells me the company might have recently gone out of business, which I guess has affected things. I have seen the odd pair go cheap on eBay, particularly if only one of the eyes work, which you might be able to get away with.

I don't want this to sound like i'm hating on the project as i really do like it. just looking at the size and cost of the kit to generate the video (looks to come to about £97), you could achieve the same current functionality in a smaller lower power setup based round the OSD systems used for RC FPV flying. quick tot up looks like about £76 is doable with gps and temp sensors. It doesn't have the same potential as your project (raspi could be displaying piste maps and all sorts of other data where as an fpv osd is limited to text)I will be very interested to see what future versions of your build will bring

Wow, that's pretty cool! Have you tried anything new this winter? I wonder if any of the bigger snowboard companies are trying to create HUDs in goggles. Have you used this during any sort of powder snowboarding or other difficult conditions?